Karyna's Response

[Robert Greco]

#554

“There seems to be a basic step in the process of composing that skilled writers rely on even when they are unaware of it and that less skilled writers can be taught. This process seems to rely on very careful attention to one’s inner reflections and is often accompanied with bodily sensations.”

Every time I sit down to write something, I feel a tremendous sense of pressure, turmoil, and fear. I fear the empty page, that endless, inviting, and yet profoundly empty space that awaits being populated with ideas. Coupled with a pathological desire for perfection and a need to get “it” right from the first try, putting that first sentence down is always an effort, an accomplishment in itself.

The idea expressed in the quote above adds an extra layer to this process. While I agree that writing process is accompanied by “inner reflections” and “bodily sensations”, I feel like it is the confidence and trust in your own feelings that is also needed for this process to be rewarding. So many times I asked myself “does it feel right?” “would my readers just laugh at me?” The notion of felt sense makes writing a deeply personal matter. What’s on the page is not a product of a purely rational brain, it is a product of a feeling, emotion, sensation that traveled trough every nerve and every muscle, a piece of information that was fired from one neuron to the other.

Thinking of composing as this largely personal process, I can’t help but wonder what role does audience play in it. We assume the audience through the process of projective structuring. And in fact, Bakhtin, for instance, argues that whenever we say or write anything, we always, sometimes unconsciously, assume both a direct and indirect audience to our utterances. But my question is, does a favorable reception of our writing by our audience constitute a validation of our bodily experience?

[Sondra Perl]

#559

Karyna, you write:

“So many times I asked myself “does it feel right?” “would my readers just laugh at me?” ”

I think these two questions point in very different directions. “Feeling right” implies feeling right to you, internally, getting the sense of what you are trying to say on paper or screen. If you have done it so that it (the words, sentences, images) resonate with your internal sense of meaning, then it ‘feels right.’ This does not, in my experience, have a lot to do with the audience. They may or may not get it — but for me that’s a later consideration and happens best by getting responses from real readers. A ‘favorable response’ may validate us — or our bodily experience — but I don’t think we actually know what readers get unless they can say back what they’ve read. Your words may mean or evoke many other meanings for your readers.

[Author]

Posts